Zoe Wanamaker

As she staggers across the dirt stage of "Electra" every night, a daughter wrapped in her father's immense cloak, Zoe Wanamaker carries on a legacy that reaches back 2,400 years to the hillsides of ancient Greece. But the metaphor of her own father's cloak, that of the great actor Sam Wanamaker, weighs equally heavy on her small yet sturdy shoulders.

As she staggers across the dirt stage of "Electra" every night, a daughter wrapped in her father's immense cloak, Zoe Wanamaker carries on a legacy that reaches back 2,400 years to the hillsides of ancient Greece. But the metaphor of her own father's cloak, that of the great actor Sam Wanamaker, weighs equally heavy on her small yet sturdy shoulders.

The strength of this 'Masterpiece Theatre' drama derives much less from its script than from performances of the actresses. This 1993 BBC production unites Wendy Hiller and Zoe Wanamaker in a bittersweet contemporary story by Allan Cubitt that is part mystery and part character study. Grand dame Hiller, (pictured right), is 80-year-old Englishwoman Alice, Countess von Holzendorf.

"The word 'actress' has always seemed less a job description to me than a title," Gene Tierney once observed. If she were still among us, the star of stage and screen might be surprised to find tarnished whatever cachet, in the glamour-gilded 1940s and '50s, was attached to the word. If "actress" is indeed a title, in many quarters it is no longer considered one of distinction.

"The Countess Alice" is a good way to spend 90 minutes. The strengths of this elegant new "Masterpiece Theatre" drama derive much less from its script--a rather thin rendering about eroding ties between mother and daughter--than from the luminous performances of the actresses playing those roles. The BBC production--airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, and 8 p.m.

"Once in a Lifetime," by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, is nearly 60 years old and thriving. The L.A. Classic Theatre Works presented it on KCRW-FM last year, and La Jolla Playhouse is about to mount a production. Yet it's the BBC, not a commercial network, which has seen fit to revive it for the larger television audience. The result (tonight at 9 on Channels 28, 15 and 24; Saturday at 9 p.m. on Channel 50) is a snazzy, sharp-tongued satire of Hollywood in the first years of the talkie era.

Shakespeare's Globe -- the famous outdoor theater venue in London -- will honor its late founder, the once-blacklisted American actor-director Sam Wanamaker, by naming a new indoor stage after him. The indoor venue, which will enable the company to produce year-round, will be called the Sam Wanamaker Theatre. Wanamaker worked for many years to create the Globe but died in 1993 before he could see the finished project, which debuted in 1997. The new theater space will seat approximately 320 people and will be lit by candlelight in the historic Jacobean tradition, according to report from the BBC News.

Sam, they played it again, and everybody's cheering. It was Zoe Wanamaker, gray robe trailing across the straw-covered wooden stage, voice ringing around the thatch-roofed "wooden O," who brought a dream to life and a glittering new constellation to the firmament of London theaters. Officially opening a hard-won reproduction of William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames, Wanamaker summoned a fiery muse to salute the Bard and the memory of her father.

The strength of this 'Masterpiece Theatre' drama derives much less from its script than from performances of the actresses. This 1993 BBC production unites Wendy Hiller and Zoe Wanamaker in a bittersweet contemporary story by Allan Cubitt that is part mystery and part character study. Grand dame Hiller, (pictured right), is 80-year-old Englishwoman Alice, Countess von Holzendorf.

Diana Rigg may never supplant Alistair Cooke. Yet one could make a case for "Mystery!" having eclipsed "Masterpiece Theatre" as the centerpiece drama series on PBS. And then help support it by citing "Prime Suspect," the crackling good three-parter from Britain's Granada Television opening at 9 tonight on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15. The mystery in this new "Mystery!"--and it does keeps you guessing--centers on the identity of a particularly monstrous serial killer.